Among the most important characters in contemporary writer Anne Tyler's nine novels of modern American life are her skillfully-drawn managing women who choose the family circle as the arena in which to use their skills and exert their influence. Strong, competent, independent, capable of caring for themselves, their husbands, their children, and others, too, as well as holding outside jobs, these women are the linchpins of their families. Among their most outstanding qualities are their abilities to endure hardships with heads high and skills unhampered. Within this broad category of managing women, Tyler clearly delineates two types of managers: the regenerative managing woman and the rigid managing woman. A major character in every novel, the regenerative managing woman not only endures, she also adapts. The key to her development and her strength is her capacity for trying again, renewing herself, and her family relationships. The evolution of a vital regenerative woman from a lonely childhood through the beginning of her vibrant womanhood is a key element in every Tyler novel. This development always includes an escape from her original family? an attempt to establish her own family; at least one major hardship that often sends her reeling home; and finally, at least one new start toward establishing her ideal family circle. Tyler's treatment of the regenerative managing woman in the first four novels concentrates on her young womanhood and her early establishment of her family. The later novels begin when the regenerative managing woman is in her thirties or forties and concentrate primarily on the ways the regenerative woman manages her family. Many of Tyler's novels also feature a rigid managing woman. While this character type manages with strength and competence, she is not a positive influence on her family. She endures. But she does not adapt. Too proud to admit her mistakes, or too selfish to notice them, she does not learn; thus, she does not change. Consequently, she stifles her own growth, as well as that of her family, even though she is not totally devoid of good qualities.

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Literary scholars have been examining and recreating the experiences of “bonded” female characters within Toni Morrison’s novels for decades. However, the distinct experiences of these enslaved women, that are also mothers have not been astutely examined by scholars and deserves more attention. My thesis fleshes out the characterization of several of Morrison’s bonded-mothers and identifies them as a part of a developing controlling image and theory, called the bondmother. Situating these characters within this category allows readers to trace their journeys towards freedom and personal redemption. This character tracing will occur by examining the following Toni Morrison novels: Beloved (1987) and Paradise (1997). In order to fully examine the experiences of these characters it will be necessary for me to expand the definition of bondage and mother. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis discusses the ideals of behaviour which sought to govern family life and which were common currency in England and northern Europe, how they were constructed, and how the late medieval gentry and nobility interacted with them. Hagiography, sermons, and courtesy literature all explicitly sought to influence the views and behaviour of their audiences, whilst the letter collections of the Pastons, Plumptons, Stonors, Celys, and Armburghs offer an insight into the self-perceptions of the recipients of this didactic material. Much of this material has been studied, but it did not exist in a vacuum. Images in books, often marking key moments in a typical life-cycle, supported, extended, even contradicted the notions inculcated by these texts, were increasingly relevant to later medieval daily lives, and both influenced their audience and were used by their audience as a form of self-fashioning. The five chapters of this thesis each explore a different aspect of the medieval lifecycle. Chapters One and Two take the foundation of the household, marriage, as their starting point, discussing courtship and the ideal marriage ceremony, as well as the attributes and behaviour of the ideal spouse. Chapter Three turns to how this household operated on a wider scale, demonstrating how lords were caught between Christ's example and the pressures of lavish lay display when building networks of friendship. Chapter Four considers the genesis of a new generation: how images and texts conveyed sometimes different notions of the ideal mother and father, the location of the household as a place of learning, and the importance of models when shaping the development of the ideal child. Lastly, Chapter Five investigates the end of the lifecycle, death, and how images and texts worked together to propound the central medieval idea of a 'good death'. Consideration is given throughout this thesis to how the norms of behaviour communicated by texts and images may be studied.

This thesis provides a detailed consideration of the family in Shakespeare’s canon and the engagement therewith in three South African novels: Hill of Fools (1976) by R. L. Peteni, My Son’s Story (1990) by Nadine Gordimer, and Disgrace (1999) by J. M. Coetzee. The study is divided into an introduction, three chapters each addressing one of the South African novels and its relationship with a Shakespeare text or texts, and a conclusion. The introductory chapter provides an analysis of the two strands of criticism in which the thesis is situated – studies of the family in Shakespeare and studies of appropriations of Shakespeare – and discusses the ways in which these two strands may be combined through a detailed discussion of the presence of power dynamics in the relationship between parent and child in all of the texts considered. The three chapters each contextualise the South African text and provide detailed discussions of the family dynamics within the relevant texts, with particular reference to questions of authority and autonomy. The focus in each chapter is determined by the nature of the intertextual relationship between the South African novel and the Shakespearean text being discussed. Thus, the first chapter, “The Dissolution of Familial Structures in Hill of Fools” considers power dynamics in the family as an inherent part of the Romeo and Juliet genre, of which William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is but a part. Similarly, the impact of a socio-political identity, and the secrecy it necessitates, is the focus of the second chapter, “Fathers, Sons and Legacy in My Son’s Story” as is the role of Shakespeare and literature within South Africa. These concerns are connected to the novel’s use of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, King Lear, and Hamlet. In the third chapter, “Reclaiming Agency through the Daughter in Disgrace and The Tempest”, I expand on Laurence Wright’s argument that Disgrace is an engagement with The Tempest and consider ways in which the altered power dynamic between father and daughter results in the reconciliation of the father figure with society. The thesis thus addresses the tension between parental bonds and parental bondage

The family trilogy, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West, presents Sam Shepard's strong bond with his culture and his people, illustrates an intense connection with the land, and reveals a deep longing for the traditions of the past, through the dramatisation of the betrayal of the American Dream. Although obviously part of the American tradition of family drama, Shepard never completely conforms, subverting the genre by debunking the traditional family in order to make a statement about the present disintegration of the bonds of family life and modern American society. In the trilogy Shepard decries the loss of the old codes connecting with his despair at the debasement of the ideals of the past and the demise of the American Dream. Finally, the plays insist on the importance a new set of tenets to supplant the sterile ethics of modern America / M.A. (English)

The family trilogy, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West, presents Sam Shepard's strong bond with his culture and his people, illustrates an intense connection with the land, and reveals a deep longing for the traditions of the past, through the dramatisation of the betrayal of the American Dream. Although obviously part of the American tradition of family drama, Shepard never completely conforms, subverting the genre by debunking the traditional family in order to make a statement about the present disintegration of the bonds of family life and modern American society. In the trilogy Shepard decries the loss of the old codes connecting with his despair at the debasement of the ideals of the past and the demise of the American Dream. Finally, the plays insist on the importance a new set of tenets to supplant the sterile ethics of modern America / M.A. (English)